Have you met your neighbor and exchanged more than a wave? Do you know their name if someone asked?
If so, while you are in the majority, you may be surprised to find that it’s not as big of a group as you’d imagine. Roughly 33% of Americans claim they have “never interacted” with their neighbors. A mere 20% say that they spend any amount of time with them on a regular basis. A third claim they did not know the names of any of the people living around them.
Experts say that it hasn’t always been like this. They point to a time running from the 1920s to the 1960s as an era when neighbors were close and found security in the bonds they created with the people around them in their neighborhoods. One reason was that the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Great Depression and other such events created a lot of social tension, and people turn to their neighbors as a result.
Things have certainly changed in the modern day, though, with people living perhaps just a few yards from one another without even bothering to learn each other’s names. It’s not just that they’re not close friends. They’ve perhaps never even met.
Could this new outlook play into neighbor disputes? Are you more likely to have a dispute with someone who is essentially a stranger than you would be with someone that you counted as a friend? How does the way that people live now contribute to the way they relate? If you do end up in a dispute, you need to know your legal options.
